Whether or not you plan to (or currently) “sleep train” your baby, new parents and parents-to-be are familiar with wondering if their baby will be a “good sleeper,” or if they will be up all night long. It seems as though the instant you bring your baby home, strangers and family members start to ask “ohhh is she sleeping through the night yet?”
For some, it’s nothing more than an innocent question, but for others it can be obnoxious. Tired parents will sense a notion of judgment or eagerness to hear of the parent’s failure to being able to keep their baby asleep, or they just dread hearing the question because it reminds them of how little sleep they are actually getting.
Good sleeper or not, there’s one thing that I think we can all agree on – that newborns sleep differently than young infants, and young infants sleep differently than older babies. When Jia was sleeping in our living room in her crib, Jeff and I tiptoed around our 1-bedroom condo like you wouldn’t believe. For a handful of weeks I was living on-edge after 8:30 PM. I dreaded bedtime. Whether it was the dogs barking at something they heard outside our window, needing to take a quick trip to the fridge, opening and closing our squeaking front door (thank you WD-40) or wondering if the dropping of the shampoo bottle in the shower was enough to rouse her from her light sleep, I was going nuts.
Nowadays, in her own room sleeping 11-11.5 hours straight, I still wonder: how come our friends’ toddler needs the clanking of pots and pans or loudly opening and closing dresser drawers to wake up, whereas sometimes it seems Jia can sleep through an army passing by her door but other nights her sleep will be disturbed by Jeff blowing his nose next door?
We started talking about this and I became curious – how are sleep patterns and brain waves different for infants and toddlers, and when do they change?
